Healing is hard, but healing is worth it.

We didn’t plan to become closed off to the world, but a lot of us were taught that it’s safer to go through difficult seasons alone than to risk being vulnerable with the wrong people.

We learned this lesson the hard way—we asked for help, only to be judged and ridiculed. We poured into people who never truly appreciated us. We didn’t just stumble, we fell flat on our faces—because there was no shoulder left to lean on. We looked around for our support system and saw an empty room.

And as much as we don’t want to hold onto these parts of our stories, how could we ever forget how that felt?

Healing is a difficult, frightening process. Some days, you feel light. You can feel yourself letting go of situations that used to trigger you. On other days, it feels like the weight of every burden that you’ve ever carried is bearing down on your shoulders and your spirit. “Heavy” is an understatement.

And so you wake up one day and decide that it’s better to be numb than to risk falling off of another emotional cliff. You decide to run from your feelings for another day, because it’s the only way you know how to keep moving. You decide that you’re better off pretending that everything is ok, even when it’s not.

And this is a valid survival mechanism. We can’t snap our fingers and become the people we were before the trauma. We can’t pretend to be okay until we are okay. Healing takes work. We need a lot of time, space, and grace to walk the path towards restoration and uncompromising self-acceptance. Healing isn’t a destination, it’s a lifelong process—and i think we’ll all be better off acknowledging how hard it really is, while choosing to believe that it’s worth the effort.